Xavius
by Azshiri
Summary: Just a story about how I perceive Xavius' past. Why he is not listed on the character list for WoW I do not know...


At dawn, I will undertake a task that many will not comprehend. I don't seek to explain this ritual to them—it isn't their business. However, in times of doubt, in times of struggle, to have this note from my own quill will be of aid. I will be able to not only see, but better see my decisions.

I, in fact, do plan to undergo a painful ritual to improve my physical, magical sight along with my spiritual, mental sight.

At dawn, I will take a light anesthetic made of two parts Morrowgrain, one part Sungrass. I will then steel myself. And then, after that I will slam two spikes on the top of my staff into my eyes. For two hours, I will be blind. Completely blind. I will endure the pain. I will embrace the darkness. My other senses—smell, taste, feeling, hearing—they will grow. They will overcome their current weaknesses.

For two hours, I will be the shadows of which my surname was born. _Shadowdreamer._ I will unite with them. And for two hours, I will understand my origins unlike ever before.

After those two hours, I will sear two Obsidium rocks—the birthstones I wear around my neck—into the dripping eye sockets and enchant them to increase not only the binding process, but also my vision. Assuming this ritual goes perfectly, as it will, since I have been planning it for nearly thirty-eight years, I will then be able to see things that my current eyes cannot perceive.

Magical ley lines, spirits, hidden people, auras. It will only serve to strengthen me. Perhaps, however, the real reason I write this is not to share with myself the details of this ritual. I know them. I crafted the ritual. Perhaps, I write this, because I am uncertain as to why I need to do such a thing to myself. Perhaps I write this because my search for power frightens me and I cannot comprehend the reasons I am willing to harm myself.

So now I will delve into a more emotional platform. A more...dangerous place for my mind to wander.

Why, I ask, am I willing to skewer my eyeballs? Why is it okay for me to drive tiny metal spikes into my body? Is it only for power? For strength? Is it something so easily attained through other methods, just madness pushing me onwards?

It is vengeance. Dedication. Determination. It is hardly about power as much as it is about escape.

My heritage. That gods-damned half-bred heritage. The _sin _that is my ancestry. And not even all of it, but half of it. The events that caused me, Xavius Shadowdreamer, to come into existence. I scar myself because of my past.

If that is even a point to make…perhaps it is madness. My father's choices scarred me—literally and figuratively—to the point that I considered death. A thousand times I considered death only to realize that I can never die.

And this bitter reflection brings me back to where I started. The 'why' of it all. The 'how.' My heritage. _My history._

If only I were half-bred Kal'dorei, perhaps my eyes and the image of myself would not anger me so. Likely, because of my father, I have anger issues. Enough problems with them that I turn my efforts for change not only against the world, but against myself.

No, I couldn't be half-bred Kal'dorei. I couldn't be a half-mongrel elf. No, not at all. Instead, my very core churns against itself in eternal war. Banished from my ancestral grounds because I was born. _Banished._ And now I seek to separate myself not only from what I will never be allowed to have, but from what I was forced to bear until my 67th birth season.

My late father, Magrethar Flamesear, was the son of Ragnaros. The child of the Firelord. A raging inferno waiting to engulf any and every obstacle. Too stubborn to care about his actions, but too impulsive to control them.

He may be the main reason I cannot stand myself. He taught me as much, night after night of beating me with his empty liquor bottles. Day after day of stealing the money I earned to get myself out of his presence. Hour after constant, lurching hour of holding him steady while I walked him home from the bar just to be screamed at for letting him go to begin with. Every miserable second of my life at home was his whim, his will, his power, his ideas, his morals, his ethics, and how horrible I and everything mine was.

And then, as he sat on the execution table in front of Queen Azshiva, the wretched bitch that she was, he had the audacity to say that I betrayed him. That I, the son who tolerated him, attempted to get him off of trial, attempted to get him out of jail, sold myself into service of the palace that shunned my people to save him, betrayed him because Azshiva changed her mind.

And still I cried as the hammer of my role model crashed into my father's core, shattering it.

Perhaps it was spiteful; to shed tears over him, to miss him. Perhaps, even now, as I contemplate what I face at sunrise, it still is spiteful. For all his faults, he taught me what to do and more importantly, what not to do.

And my late mother, Arules Deepmist, daughter of Neptulon the Tidehunter, died years before my father. She was passive as still water most of the time, however, when she moved, it was a flood of emotion and power.

From her, I inherited a disease now known as Hemophilia. And from that disease she found her end. One evening, while she cleaned the house, she tripped and fell. I found her that night, bringing home supper. Dad had agreed to sober up; he was in a decent, pleasant mood. I stopped skipping school. I stopped skipping work. I called to her, from downstairs. She always cleaned the kitchen first, then the stairwell, then the upstairs. It was about time for her to finish her and dad's room.

She didn't answer. I called again. I kept calling, and after five calls, I went to find her. She wasn't in her room, she wasn't in mine, there was no note saying she'd gone out. I couldn't find her. I tried, but she wasn't there. Then I heard the gurgle in the bathroom. I knocked, there was no answer. I knocked louder. I yelled for her to open up the damned door.

She still didn't respond.

I couldn't wait anymore. I knew something was wrong. And I broke the door down, and saw her curled up in the bathtub. Silent. Still. Like a pond on a winter day.

I ran in and grabbed her arm, and I begged her to respond. I begged her to listen to me, to tell me what happened. I refused to notice that she was melting away, slowly. I refused to accept that my mother was gone. I screamed for her to do something, to hold on while I got help. I grabbed her face and glared at her, tears streaming down my own cheeks when I realized she was gone before I got there.

I begged her to stay anyway. I tried to bribe her back to life with the fact that I had a job again. Tried to convince her to stay because I used my first paycheck to buy us a good meal. Her favorite meal. That she couldn't leave us because we had agreed to be better. 

But I was too late. And I fell to the side of that tub as she trickled away. It rained that night.

That's the only time I ever really remember rain.

Maybe the real reason I want to get rid of my eyes is because I remember the pain and agony of my parents' existence. Because I miss them and feel guilty holding onto the last true piece of them I have.

Maybe I just want their gift to follow them so that as they scale the great beyond, they have my purple eyes watching their backs.

Maybe I just want to be with them, and can't because I can't die.

I don't really know why. That's the truth of it. It's not madness, anger, depression, or power that drive me. I know that much. Maybe, just maybe, it's that I've seen far too much now to keep this violet orbs saddled in my skull.

It doesn't matter, I suppose. As long as I continue moving forward.

At dawn, I'll undergo a ritual that many will not comprehend. Myself included.


End file.
